Category Archives: Blog

At midnight on tomorrow, (the 21st of June), Archive Crawl will cease to exist in its current form. The content will be stored away in my hard drive, but the site as you know it will cease to be. I’ve just been putting off things again and again and it’s just not worth keeping the hosting up anymore.

This will mark the two-year anniversary of the site’s creation, so it’s as good a day as any to let things go. I’ll admit, I’m a bit broken up about things. Archive Crawl was a major part of my life at one time or another, it helped me get through some bad times, it put me in contact with some amazing people (Some of whom I still talk to today through Twitter and sometimes games) , and it was just a lot of fun overall. But all things must go to dust eventually, and it’s time. I’m in a new chapter of my life, this one should end. I’m not going away though! You can still hear from me on Twitter and such.

Blogging is a curious art. At first you don’t give half a damn about who reads it because it’s just a little blog. But you get a taste of fame and things go crazy. Of course, “fame” is a relative term, I got 100 views one day and about pissed myself. But it never was about the ad revenue or whatever, it was that my ideas were actually reaching someone in ways that I never thought possible. My writing went up and down as did my moods and methods, but people still read. It was a great feeling, I will tell you that.

I want to give a shoutout to a few people.

Talthos, of Complex Actions, was one guy that really kept me going in the early days just by chatting every once in a while. It’s hard to start, it’s lovely to know that a great, normal person was reading. We still occasionally chat on Twitter and play games together. He’s a great guy.

Jack Cayless. English bloke that does Chimneyspeak. Great comic-er, inspired me to put pictured in the papers for the first time. Still chat on occasion, another sweet guy.

The various people that relinked my posts on your sites. I know that it was mostly a masturbatory act, but a kind one nonetheless. The special ones in my hearts were the new comic people that never had a review before. It warmed my cockles (and my heart, heyooo!) to see people get so excited about their work, and deservedly so. Brad and Leslie from Blaster Nation were one of these swell folks.

Of course, my friends IRL deserve mention. For all the shit they had to listen to about this site, if anything.

And, of course, my dear readers. I always figured that most people just glanced at the wall of text and tabbed away, but I know some people kept on going, and I love you for it.

And… well… that’s about it, folks. I love you all, I do. And in a way, I’m really going to miss this site. I haven’t visited it in months, but just knowing it was there, helping some sad bastard waste a day was comforting. But all things must end eventually, eh? It’s not like I won’t still be in the internet, somewhere.

So a health to the company. For we may or might never all meet here again.

As a side note, I’ve decided to implement a ten point number scale, something I’ve avoided in the past for various reasons. It’s making an appearance because I’ve noticed that all my reviews have had to end the same way, with a bland recommendation. No scale there, just “read it if you want”. So hopefully this will allow some more freedom.

A note about the numbers, though. I will not be using a Four Point Scale. 5/10 is an average comic. 6/10 is a bit above average. 10/10 would have to utterly blow my mind beyond any real boundaries, which means you will probably never see it.

To give scale, here’s some retroactive scores:

Dresden Codak 8.5/10 (Still my favorite comic of all time, but it’s not without its flaws)

BREAKING NEWS: The creators of Sandra and Wooare making a swords-and-high-magic fantasy webcomic, updating in parallel to S&W. It’s called Gaia, and it looks promising.

I still catch up with S&W from time to time, it is still wonderfully written, witty, and some other nice words that begin with W. The art and the dialogue seem to have carried over well, which is excellent. My only concern is that the writing will lose some power when moving from a primarily comedic world to a relatively serious plot. However, we’re only eighteen pages in, which is barely the first page when it comes to fantasy stories, let alone the first act. There are some gems in the available pages that give me hope, still, and I certainly recommend keeping your eye on this comic.

You look good! How’s the dog? Dead, huh? That sucks. I haven’t seen you since June, I didn’t know.

Well, I’ve been busy with this and that, and I’ve not really been in the blogging frame of mind for a while. But, people keep coming to the site, so I suppose I should put something up. It might not be webcomics, but that’s the big life.

I’m planning on doing a Deus Ex: Human Revolution Let’s Play on Youtube. The first few videos are going to be kind of trashy while I work out my setup for them, but I hope that I can put on a decent show. So here’s the first video, it’s mostly cutscenes so I just threw in some stuttering, random commentary to try to get the mic setup properly. Unfortuantely, I’m not really used to this so I recorded in my normal speech, which is the complete package of bizarre turns of half-phrases. I’m sorry if it’s horrid, it will get better. Promise.

That is, better in different videos of different games. I’ve decided to only do a couple of videos to show off the game, it was pointed out to me that doing a runthrough of a brand new game is a pretty crappy thing to do, spoilers and whatnot. So I won’t be having much of it.